The baha’i world

SHOGHI 

 

indefinable, touched with deep tenderness and pathos. Like a great white pearl the marble temple marking the grave of Bahiyyih 

Khánum glows in the light of its reflectors, seeming afire on the dark mountain side, lighting up and watching over those two 

approaching the scene of their last resting place.  

When we enter to pay our respects to those beloved, revered and long since departed ones, their presence seems to fill the room. At 

last, after seventy years, that saintly mother lies reunited beside her son of whom Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “He was created of the light of 

Bahâ.” Side by side, facing ‘Akká, the sweet fumes of attar of rose with which they have been anointed by the Guardian filling the 

room, they lie: And above them, lit by the flickering lights of the sentinel candles, the picture of The Greatest Holy Leaf hangs, her 

beautiful eyes, so full of love and that purity which is goodness itself, looking out over her mother and brother. What cause for joy and 

gratitude!  

That tender youth, born to affliction, reared in exile, died in prison, buried in  

‘By Navvãb, His first wife, Bahã’u’lláh had thtee children, ‘Abdn’l-Bahá, His Successor, Bahiyyih Ebnum and Mihdi, the Purest 

Branch. 

 

THE BURIAL OF THE PUREST BRANCH AND THE MOTHER OF 

‘ABDU1-BAHA 

 

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The burial-ground on Mount Carmel in which are laid to rest the immediate family of ‘Abdu’l-Bahã. On the right is the shrine of  

Bahiyyih Khánum, His sister. On the left the twin monuments marking the resting-places of His mother and brother.  

Below them can be seen the dome of the monument of his wife, Munirih Khánum. 

 

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solitary haste! Here he lies, raised up from the earth by the hands of the Guardian of his Father’s Faith, removed from the lonely 

isolation of the Arab cemetery where he had been interred so long ago and placed beside his illustrious sister and holy mother, that 

mother who was affectionately known as “Bflyflk Khánum” or “Great Lady.” Slender, stately, lovely to look on with white skin and 

blue eyes and dark hair; she who, when Bahá’u’lláh was thrown into the dungeon of Tihrán, was abandoned by friend and foe alike 

and who purchased food for her children by selling the gold buttons of her robes; she who was forced to leave this same son, then a 

delicate child of four, behind her when she followed Bahá’u’lláh into exile; she whose tender hands, unaccustomed to work, bled as 

she washed the clothes of her family; who remained patient, devout, serene and selfless to the end of her life, and who was laid to rest 

near ‘Akká in a cemetery away from her son, now lies beside him, so to remain forever more.  

As we meditate beside those two eloquent coffins, covered with woven cloths, strewn with jasmine from the Threshold of the Báb’s 

Tomb, so all pervading is the presence of their spirits—or maybe it is their memory, as perfume lingers when the flower is withered—

that the very room they rest in for so short awhile becomes itself filled with the sweet peace of a shrine.  

Not only has the Guardian raised them to rest in their rightful graves, put them where the whole world may see their honor and their 

glory, but in some mysterious way he has given them back to us. So long ago they passed away, so quietly, in days of such turmoil and 

oppression, were they laid to rest, that their places, at least to us of the ‘West, were on written pages of the history of our Faith. But 

now their places are in our hearts. The veil of time and obscurity separating us has been rent asunder, and we find, to our joy and 

astonishment, two glowing and holy figures drawing nigh to us, entering into our lives, and ready to help us on that path which leads 

to their Lord and ours, Bahá’u’lláh.  

How warm and living his personality suddenly seems, no longer a name, albeit a revered one, Mihdi, the Purest Branch, but 

 

a sweet and selfless youth filled with love and devotion for Him who was not only his earthly but heavenly Father as well. Slight of 

frame, small of stature, black of hair, scarce twenty years of age, when at the time of his death he acted as the amanuensis of 

Bahá’u’lláh and the character of his script has remained to us as a tender reminder that he stood only on the threshold of manhood.  

Bahá’u’lláh Himself in numerous Tablets has mentioned this beloved son of His, recounting His long separation from him when he 

was left behind in Iran and was deprived of his family; how later he suffered the exiles and imprisonments of his Father until that 

fateful day when, as Bahá’u’lláh wrote: “He has suffered martyrdom at a time when he lay imprisoned at the hands of his enemies.”  

The cruelty of exile and banishment became the rigor of complete incarceration during Mihdi’s short life time. Upon entering the 

prison city of ‘Akká they were confined in the barracks itself, and it was during this strict period of Bahá’u’lláh’s imprisonment, when 

they suffered the greatest privations and were the victims of terrible epidemics, that the Purest Branch passed away. No one of the 

devout and faithful, who, some on foot, some on mule back, made the long and arduous journey to see the face of their Lord, was 

admitted to His presence. They were forced to content themselves with a brief glimpse of Him as He stood in a window facing the 

little hill beyond the walls and moat where they were wont to await His appearance.  

It was under such circumstances that one night, whilst walking on the roof of the fortress, the Purest Branch fell through the opening 

leading below and was fatally injured. It was the custom of those prisoners to get what air and exercise they could in this manner, and 

no doubt that youth, lost to all but his thoughts and meditations, stepped unawares through the unguarded sky hght. Although the 

ceilings of oriental rooms are very high, it was not a fall which necessarily would cause the death of a person. But the Purest Branch 

was terribly injured. He bled profusely from the mouth, and his thigh was so battered and bleeding that his garment could not be 

removed but was torn from him—that pitiful relic which 

 

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the Greatest Holy Leaf preserved for posterity and which to this day may be seen with the stains of his life’s blood upon it. He 

survived for about thirty hours after the fall. The doctors, hastily called in, were powerless to help him, but we cannot but believe that 

it lay within the power of his Father to spare his life, if He had so willed it.  

Bahá’u’lláh asked of His dying son if he desired to live, but he replied that his sole desire was that the gates of the prison should be 

opened so that the believers might visit their Lord. Bahá’u’lláh granted that youth’s earnest wish and sat beside His youngest son as 

they made him ready for the grave, and it was in those tragic circumstances that He revealed the following: “At this very moment My 

son is being washed before My face after Our having sacrificed him in the Most Great Prison 

. . .“ 

“Glorified art Thou, 0 Lord, My God! 

Thou seest Me in the hands of Mine enemies, and My son blood-stained before My face!” Such sentences as these were wrung from 

the heart of the Blessed Beauty as He gazed upon His child. But then thundering forth came these marvelous words: “I have, 0 My 

Lord, offered up that which Thou hast given Me, that Thy servants may be quickened and all that dwell on earth be united.” The 

tremendous significance of these words is inescapable; Bahá’u’lláh designates to His own child the 

role 

of blood offering in order that 

the unity of all men which He has proclaimed may come about. The sacrifice of Isaac by Abraham is accomplished.  

After, in secrecy, poverty, and haste, the Purest Branch had been interred, his gentle mother, the victim of so many sorrows and 

deprivations, saddened and wept unceasingly. Bahá’u’lláh on learning of her plight came to her and assured her she had no cause for 

grief for God had accepted this precious son as His Ransom to draw not only the believers nigh unto their Lord but to unify all the 

sons of men. After hearing these words that saintly soul was greatly comforted and ceased to mourn her heavy loss.  

And who was such a mother? Not merely a holy and faithful woman, willing in the path of God to sacrifice her all, but she of whom 

Isaiah,. in his 54th chapter, says:t “For thy Maker is thy husband; the LORD 

 

of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; the God of the whole earth shall he be called.” “For the mountains 

shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, 

saith the LORD that bath mercy on thee.” And she to whom Bahá’u’lláh revealed the following: “Hear thou Me once again, God is 

well pleased with thee  

He bath made thee to be His companion in every one of His worlds and hath nourished thee with His meeting and presence so long as 

His name and His remembrance and His kingdom and His empire shall endure.”  

How fleeting and priceless the days that this mother and son lie side by side in that small room! To be privileged to draw close  

—in that strange and pitiful closeness one feels to a coffin in which all that remains of dear ones after the soul has flown rests, a token 

and reminder of our common mortality and immortality—is something never to be forgotten. Thousands will read these Prayers and 

Tablets of Bahã’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá forever immortalizing them. They will supplicate those radiant spirits to intercede on their 

behalf. They will seek humbly to follow in their noble footsteps. But it will never, so it seems to me, be as sweet and touching as to 

see them lying there together under the watchful eyes of Bahiyyih Khánum.  

Whilst their tombs were still in process of excavation from the solid rock of the mountain, the Guardian had learned that the 

Covenant-Breakers were protesting against the right of the Bahá’is to remove the Mother and brother of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to new graves, 

actually having the temerity to represent to the government their so called claim as relatives of the deceased. As soon, however, as the 

civil authorities had the true state of facts made clear to them—that these same relatives had been the arch-enemies of the Master and 

His family, had left the true Cause of Bahá’u’llãh to follow their own devices, and had been denounced by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in His Will 

and TestaThe authority for this statement is the words of  

‘Ahdu’l-Bahá Himself in “Tablets of ‘Abdo’l-Bahã,” vol. I., page 107. 

 

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ment—they approved the plan of the Guardian and immediately issued the necessary papers for the exhumation of the bodies. Without 

risking further delay Shoghi Effendi, two days later, himself removed the Purest Branch and his mother to Mount Carmel where, 

watched over by the loving devotion of the believers, and safeguarder from any danger of insult or injury, they could await, close to 

Bahiyyih Khánum’s shrine, their reinterment.  

The last stone is laid in the two vaults, the floors are paved in marble, the name plates fixed to mark their heads, the earth smoothed 

out, the path that leads to their last resting place built, but storm and rain sweep unceasingly over the crest of the mountain postponing 

the final arrangements until the day before Christmas dawns, bright and clear, as if a sign that this is the appointed time. At sunset we 

all gather in that humble, twice blessed house. We hear the voice of one of the oldest and most devoted believers of the Near East 

rassed, at the command of his Guardian, in prayer. Tremulous, faint, yet filled with a poignant faith and love hard to describe but 

never to be forgotten, he prays. As voice follows voice, one of them that of the Guardian himself, it seems as if one could almost hear 

the refrain of those prayers sung in triumphant joy by an invisible concourse on high.  

And now, again on the shoulder of the Guardian, they are borne forth to lie in state in the Holy Tomb of the Mb. Side by side, far 

greater than the great of this world, they lie by that sacred threshold, facing Bahji, with candles burning at their heads and flowers 

before their feet. It is the eve of the birth of Christ. She who was foretold of Isaiah, he who was the son of Him of Whom Jesus said: 

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth,” rest quietly here their last night before the earth hides 

them forever more from the eyes of men.  

The following sunset we gather once again in that Holy Shrine. The Guardian chants the Tablet of Visitation, first in the Tomb of the 

Mb, then in the Tomb of the Master. The privileged friends who have been able to make the pilgrimage to Haifa for this sacred 

occasion enter with the Guardian a 

 

second time the Báb’s Shrine. Slowly, held aloft on the hands of the faithful, led by Shoghi Effendi, who never relinquishes his 

precious burden, first the mother of ‘Abdu’lBahá and then the Purest Branch are ushered from that Holy Spot. Once they 

circumambulate the Shrines, the coffin of beloved Mihdi, supported by the Guardian, followed by that of the Master’s mother, passes 

us slowly by. Around the Shrine, onward through the lighted garden, down the white path, out onto the moonlit road, that solemn 

procession passes. High, seeming to move of themselves, above the heads of those following, the coffins wend their way. They mount 

the steps and once again enter that gate leading to Bahiyyih Khánum’s resting place. They pass before us, outlined against the night 

sky, across whose face fitful clouds make sport of the full moon. They approach, the face of the Guardian close to that priceless 

burden he bears. They pass on toward the waiting vaults.  

Now they lay the Purest Branch to rest. Shoghi Effendi himself enters the carpeted vault and gently eases the coffin to its preordained 

place. He himself strews it with flowers, his hands the last to caress it. The mother of the Master is then placed in the same manner by 

the Guardian in the neighboring vault. Not six feet apart they rest. The silent faces of the believers in the brilliant light of the lamps, 

form a waiting circle. Masons are called to seal the tombs. Respectfully and deftly they fulfil their task. Flowers are heaped upon the 

vaults and the Guardian sprinkles a vial of attar of rose upon them. The pungent scent is caught up on the breeze and bathes our faces. 

And now the voice of Shoghi Effendi is raised as he chants those tablets revealed by Bahá’u’lláh and destined by Him to be read at 

their graves.  

Surely this is a dream? It cannot be I that stand here gazing at these new-made graves, laid in the breast of ancient Carmel! Beneath 

me stretches an endless vista. ‘Akkã gleams white across the bay, that onetime prison city where these two were so long captives, near 

which they were once buried. The reaches of the sea and plain lie before me, opening out to where the moon silvers the rims of the 

mountains of the Holy 

 

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Land, the Land of the Prophets, the Land of the loved ones of God, the Land chosen to be the Seat of the Ark of God in 

this most glorious Day. Forever and increasingly about the resting place of this mother, sister, brother of ‘Abdu’l-Bahã, 

the life-giving activities of their Faith will gather. Close to them, focused on their shrines, great in- 

 

stitutions will rise to strengthen the soul and body of mankind. And forever interwoven with those institutions will be the memory and 

example of these three holy persons. Their way has become our way and they lead us on before, heading the ranks of Bahá’u’lláh’s 

followers.  

ROHfvvsH 

 

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THE PASSING OF 

 

MUNIRIH 

 

KHANUM, THE HOLY MOTHER  

EPISODES IN THE LIFE OF MUNtRIH KHANUM  

Quotations from an Autobiography  

C’  

ROM the beginning of my life, and during the period of my childhood, there have come into my life wonders—each one of which is a 

miracle, causing great astonishment. Were I to explain every incident fully, and to give thanks with my tongue for every blessing 

vouchsafed, I should be unable to go on with this account, and it would lead to prolixity.  

“The name of my father was Mirzá Muhammad ‘All Nahri, the son of Háj I Siyyid Muhammad Hendi (Indian). Háj I Siyyid 

Mul?ammad was born and lived in the village of Zavareh, a suburb of 1sf áhán. Having reached the age of maturity, he travelled to 

India, and insamuch as he belonged to the family of Muhammad, the Prophet, and all the descendants of Mubammad are highly 

honored and respected all over the East, in time he married one of the Princesses of the ruling Indian family. The Indian Prince, in 

order to be related to a member of the sacred family of Mul?ammad, and thus receive spiritual blessing and benediction, gave his own 

daughter into marriage with Háj I Siyyid Mubammad. Thus it came to pass that Háj I Siyyid Mukiammad sojourned in India, and for 

this reason he became known by the title of ‘Indian.’ This family connection became conducive to much fame, wealth, and honor, and 

he lived in the style of a nobleman, a prince, with all the retinue of royalty.  

“After some time, he became the happy father of two sons; the first-born was named Háji Siyyid Mehdi, who, later on, became the 

sole inheritor of all the wealth and pos session 

 

of his father. This eldest son traveled from India to Najaf (one of the Holy Cities in Karbilá, Mesopotamia) and 

domiciled there. In the course of his life, he came into possession of much wealth and real estate, farms, houses, 

caravansaries, public baths and stores. These properties were in the cities of Karbilã and Naj af. After a while he spent 

one-third of his money constructing an aqueduct to carry water into the city, and for this reason he became known by 

the title ‘Nahri’ from the Iranian word ‘Nahr’—a stream of water. This title Nahri was handed down through the 

family, and to this day his descendants are thus known.  

“Háji Siyyid Mubammad Nahri had several children, male and female. Amongst them was my father, whose name was 

Mirzã Muhammad-’Ali Nahri, and my uncle, Mirzã Hâji, who in time became the father of the wife of the King of the 

Martyrs.”  

“When the Call of the Báb arose from Shiráz, my father and uncle, as soon as they heard of 

it, 

without returning to their 

homes, or saying farewell to their families, started for Shiráz, and with the greatest haste traveled toward the Mount of 

the Beloved.”  

“Let me, likewise, detail a few words regarding my grandmother—that is, the mother of my father. She was a holy, 

believing soul, may the spirit of the Lord be with her at all times! One night, in the world of dreams, she beheld two 

orbs rising out of the well in her home and entering 

 

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The Holy Mother, Munirih Khánum, wife of ‘Abdu’l-Baha.  

Holy Mother Munirih Khánum ascended Abhá Kingdom stop With sorrowful hearts Baha’is world over recall divers phases her rich 

eventful life marked by unique services which by virtue her exalted position she rendered during darkest days ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s life stop 

All Ridván festivities suspended stop Advise Convention delegates devote special session her memory hold befitting gathering 

Auditorium Mashriq’ul-Adhkar.— (Signed) 

SHOGHI. 

(Cablegram received April 30, 1938.) 

 

her heart. She was so excited and exhilarated over this dream that she awoke from sleep, remained awake all night, and 

before sunrise, with the greatest happiness, went to the house of Hãji Siyyid Muhammad Bagher. This latter was a very 

important theologian and learned man whose word was obeyed throughout all Iran. He was peerless and without equal 

in his days. When my grandmother related her dream to him and requested an interpretation, he answered: ‘Be thou of 

good cheer and happy for God will grant thee two children who, like unto two 

 

luminous suns, will enlighten and illumine all your family and relatives.’  

(In the course of time) “my father, Mirzá Muhammad-’Ali was born and a year and three months later, my uncle, Mirzá 

Háji, was born.”  

“When my father graduated from the college (‘Kaseh-Garan’), he started on a trip to visit the sacred cities, and in 

Karbilá enrolled himself as a student in the classes of Háji Siyyid Kázim Rashdi. He became a firm and enthusiastic 

follower of the 

 

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teachings of this master and Shaykh Akimad. These two brilliant orbs shine today in the world of existence, and were 

unequalled in fame and knowledge. After living for some time in that sacred city, he took unto himself a wife.  

“When they were attending the classes of Háji Siyyid Káim, they repeatedly had met His Holiness the Mb, and had 

observed many wonderful traces and spiritual signs appearing from His Holy Temple.”  

“Now concerning my father: On arriving at 1sf Than, as his wife was living in Karbilá, he took a room in the college of 

‘KasehGaran.’ About this time His Holiness Bábu’l-Báb received a command from the Báb to leave Shiráz for I1fáhân. 

Having arrived in that city, he engaged in the promotion of the Cause, and guided many souls to this wonderful 

Movement. Among those who accepted the Message was my father. He was led to the path of knowledge and faith. 

After a while misfortune overtook him, as he received the news that his wife had ascended to the Kingdom.  

“While he was thus deprived of the comforts of a home, he met and associated with Háji Aga Muhammad, a well 

known merchant of Isfihân and one of the new believers. He was very devoted to my father. One day he said to suy 

father: ‘Inasmuch as your wife has passed away without issue, would